Afghanistan earthquake kills 1,000 people, deadliest in decades

A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing at least 1,000 people and injuring 1,500 more in the country’s deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. Officials warned that the already grim toll may still rise.

In the remote area near the Pakistani border, residents searched for survivors and the dead by digging with their bare hands through the rubble of collapsed stone and mudbrick houses, according to footage shown by the news agency Bakhtar. It was not immediately clear if major rescue equipment was being sent — or even if it could reach the area.

The extent of the destruction among the villages tucked among the mountains was still not known. Rutted roads — difficult to pass in the best of times — may have sustained significant damage, and a UNICEF official said landslides from recent rains have made access even more difficult. At least 2,000 homes were destroyed in the region, where on average every home has seven or eight people living in it, the U.N. Deputy Special Representative to Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov told reporters.

The disaster posed a major test for Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which seized power nearly 10 months ago as the U.S. and its NATO allies were carrying out their withdrawal from the country and has been largely shunned by the world community since.

Rescuers rushed to the area by helicopter, but the response is likely to be complicated since many international aid agencies left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in August. Moreover, most governments are wary of dealing directly with the group, a reluctance that could slow the deployment of emergency aid and teams.

In a rare move, the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzadah, who almost never appears in public, called for “the international community and all humanitarian organizations to help the Afghan people affected by this great tragedy and to spare no effort to help the affected people.”

“We ask God to save our poor people from trials and harm,” he said in a statement put out by the Taliban spokesman.

But in a sign of the muddled workings between the Taliban and the international community, Alakbarov said the Taliban have not formally requested that the U.N. mobilize international search and rescue teams. Afghan authorities have deployed a few dozen ambulances and several helicopters but have not asked the U.N. to obtain any more equipment or machinery from neighboring countries, he added, without elaborating.

The disaster only compounds the woes in Afghanistan, which is already deep in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions facing increasing hunger and poverty after the cutoff of international financing to the Taliban. That has prompted a massive aid program, but to avoid putting money in the Taliban’s hands, the world has funneled funding through the U.N. and other humanitarian agencies — a system that may be too slow for an emergency response to the quake.

The 6.1 magnitude quake had its epicenter in Paktika province, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the city of Khost, according to neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department. Experts put the depth at just 10 kilometers (6 miles) — another factor that could lead to severe destruction.